Canada plans to hit NATO spending target early and reduce reliance on US defense, Carney says

TORONTO (AP) — Canada will meet NATO's military spending guideline by early next year and diversify defense spending away from the United States, Prime Minister Mark Carney said Monday, asserting that Washington no longer plays a predominant role on the world stage.

The announcement means Canada will achieve NATO’s spending target of 2% of gross domestic product five years earlier than previously planned.

“Our military infrastructure and equipment have aged, hindering our military preparedness," Carney said. “Only one of our four submarines is seaworthy. Less than half of our maritime fleet and land vehicles are operational. More broadly, we are too reliant on the United States.”

According to NATO figures, Canada was estimated to be spending 1.45% of GDP on its military budget, below the 2% target that NATO countries have set for themselves. Canada previously said it was on track to meet NATO’s target by the end of the decade.

“Our goal is to protect Canadians, not to satisfy NATO accountants,” Carney said in a speech at the University of Toronto.

Canada is about to host U.S. President Donald Trump and other leaders at a summit of the Group of Seven leading industrialized nations in Alberta on June 15-17, and before the NATO summit in Europe. NATO allies are poised to increase the commitment well beyond the 2% target.

NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said last week that most U.S. allies at NATO endorse Trump’s demand that they invest 5% of gross domestic product on their defense needs and are ready to ramp up security spending even more.

"We are meeting 2%. And that is the NATO target as it is today,” Carney said at a later news conference. “We will need to spend more.” He said there will be discussions on the increased spending amount and its timeline at the NATO summit.

Carney has said he intends to diversify Canada’s procurement and enhance the country’s relationship with the EU.

“We should no longer send three-quarters of our defense capital spending to America,” Carney said in a speech at the University of Toronto. “We will invest in new submarines, aircraft, ships, armed vehicles and artillery, as well as new radar, drones and sensors to monitor the seafloor and the Arctic.”

Canada has been in discussions with the European Union to join an EU drive to break its security dependency on the United States, with a focus on buying more defense equipment, including fighter jets, in Europe. Carney’s government is reviewing the purchase of U.S. F-35 fighter jets to see if there are other options.

“We stood shoulder to shoulder with the Americans throughout the Cold War and in the decades that followed, as the United States played a predominant role on the world stage. Today, that predominance is a thing of the past,” Carney said in French, one of Canada's official languages.

He added that with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the United States became the global hegemon, noting that its strong gravitational pull became virtually irresistible and made the U.S. “our closest ally and dominant trading partner.”

“Now the United States is beginning to monetize its hegemony: charging for access to its markets and reducing its relative contributions to our collective security,” Carney said.

Trump’s calls to make Canada the 51st U.S. state have infuriated Canadians, and Carney won the job of prime minister after promising to confront the increased aggression shown by Trump.

The prime minister said "a new imperialism threatens.”

Carney said the long-held view that Canada’s geographic location will protect Canadians is increasingly archaic. The government is adding $9 billion Canadian (US$6.6 billion) in spending this year and Carney said the Canadian Coast Guard will be now be a part of the military.

European allies and Canada have already been investing heavily in their armed forces, as well as on weapons and ammunition, since Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022.

Canada Prime Minister Mark Carney walks Chief of the Defence Staff, General Jennie Carignan and Minister of National Defence David McGuinty, right, as he prepares to make an announcement at Fort York Armoury in Toronto, Canada, on Monday, June 9, 2025. (Chris Young/The Canadian Press via AP)

Canada Prime Minister Mark Carney speaks to service personnel after making an announcement as he visits Fort York Armoury in Toronto, Canada, on Monday, June 9, 2025. (Chris Young/The Canadian Press via AP)

Canada Prime Minister Mark Carney visits Fort York Armoury in Toronto, Canada, before making an announcement on Monday, June 9, 2025. (Chris Young/The Canadian Press via AP)

Canada Prime Minister Mark Carney steps into a command post as he visits Fort York Armoury in Toronto, Canada, before making an announcement on Monday, June 9, 2025. (Chris Young/The Canadian Press via AP)

Canada Prime Minister Mark Carney makes an announcement at a press conference in Toronto, Canada, on Monday, June 9, 2025. (Chris Young/The Canadian Press via AP)

Canada Prime Minister Mark Carney visits Fort York Armoury in Toronto, Canada, before making an announcement on Monday, June 9, 2025. (Chris Young/The Canadian Press via AP)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Becky Pepper-Jackson finished third in the discus throw in West Virginia last year though she was in just her first year of high school. Now a 15-year-old sophomore, Pepper-Jackson is aware that her upcoming season could be her last.

West Virginia has banned transgender girls like Pepper-Jackson from competing in girls and women's sports, and is among the more than two dozen states with similar laws. Though the West Virginia law has been blocked by lower courts, the outcome could be different at the conservative-dominated Supreme Court, which has allowed multiple restrictions on transgender people to be enforced in the past year.

The justices are hearing arguments Tuesday in two cases over whether the sports bans violate the Constitution or the landmark federal law known as Title IX that prohibits sex discrimination in education. The second case comes from Idaho, where college student Lindsay Hecox challenged that state's law.

Decisions are expected by early summer.

President Donald Trump's Republican administration has targeted transgender Americans from the first day of his second term, including ousting transgender people from the military and declaring that gender is immutable and determined at birth.

Pepper-Jackson has become the face of the nationwide battle over the participation of transgender girls in athletics that has played out at both the state and federal levels as Republicans have leveraged the issue as a fight for athletic fairness for women and girls.

“I think it’s something that needs to be done,” Pepper-Jackson said in an interview with The Associated Press that was conducted over Zoom. “It’s something I’m here to do because ... this is important to me. I know it’s important to other people. So, like, I’m here for it.”

She sat alongside her mother, Heather Jackson, on a sofa in their home just outside Bridgeport, a rural West Virginia community about 40 miles southwest of Morgantown, to talk about a legal fight that began when she was a middle schooler who finished near the back of the pack in cross-country races.

Pepper-Jackson has grown into a competitive discus and shot put thrower. In addition to the bronze medal in the discus, she finished eighth among shot putters.

She attributes her success to hard work, practicing at school and in her backyard, and lifting weights. Pepper-Jackson has been taking puberty-blocking medication and has publicly identified as a girl since she was in the third grade, though the Supreme Court's decision in June upholding state bans on gender-affirming medical treatment for minors has forced her to go out of state for care.

Her very improvement as an athlete has been cited as a reason she should not be allowed to compete against girls.

“There are immutable physical and biological characteristic differences between men and women that make men bigger, stronger, and faster than women. And if we allow biological males to play sports against biological females, those differences will erode the ability and the places for women in these sports which we have fought so hard for over the last 50 years,” West Virginia's attorney general, JB McCuskey, said in an AP interview. McCuskey said he is not aware of any other transgender athlete in the state who has competed or is trying to compete in girls or women’s sports.

Despite the small numbers of transgender athletes, the issue has taken on outsize importance. The NCAA and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committees banned transgender women from women's sports after Trump signed an executive order aimed at barring their participation.

The public generally is supportive of the limits. An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll conducted in October 2025 found that about 6 in 10 U.S. adults “strongly” or “somewhat” favored requiring transgender children and teenagers to only compete on sports teams that match the sex they were assigned at birth, not the gender they identify with, while about 2 in 10 were “strongly” or “somewhat” opposed and about one-quarter did not have an opinion.

About 2.1 million adults, or 0.8%, and 724,000 people age 13 to 17, or 3.3%, identify as transgender in the U.S., according to the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law.

Those allied with the administration on the issue paint it in broader terms than just sports, pointing to state laws, Trump administration policies and court rulings against transgender people.

"I think there are cultural, political, legal headwinds all supporting this notion that it’s just a lie that a man can be a woman," said John Bursch, a lawyer with the conservative Christian law firm Alliance Defending Freedom that has led the legal campaign against transgender people. “And if we want a society that respects women and girls, then we need to come to terms with that truth. And the sooner that we do that, the better it will be for women everywhere, whether that be in high school sports teams, high school locker rooms and showers, abused women’s shelters, women’s prisons.”

But Heather Jackson offered different terms to describe the effort to keep her daughter off West Virginia's playing fields.

“Hatred. It’s nothing but hatred,” she said. "This community is the community du jour. We have a long history of isolating marginalized parts of the community.”

Pepper-Jackson has seen some of the uglier side of the debate on display, including when a competitor wore a T-shirt at the championship meet that said, “Men Don't Belong in Women's Sports.”

“I wish these people would educate themselves. Just so they would know that I’m just there to have a good time. That’s it. But it just, it hurts sometimes, like, it gets to me sometimes, but I try to brush it off,” she said.

One schoolmate, identified as A.C. in court papers, said Pepper-Jackson has herself used graphic language in sexually bullying her teammates.

Asked whether she said any of what is alleged, Pepper-Jackson said, “I did not. And the school ruled that there was no evidence to prove that it was true.”

The legal fight will turn on whether the Constitution's equal protection clause or the Title IX anti-discrimination law protects transgender people.

The court ruled in 2020 that workplace discrimination against transgender people is sex discrimination, but refused to extend the logic of that decision to the case over health care for transgender minors.

The court has been deluged by dueling legal briefs from Republican- and Democratic-led states, members of Congress, athletes, doctors, scientists and scholars.

The outcome also could influence separate legal efforts seeking to bar transgender athletes in states that have continued to allow them to compete.

If Pepper-Jackson is forced to stop competing, she said she will still be able to lift weights and continue playing trumpet in the school concert and jazz bands.

“It will hurt a lot, and I know it will, but that’s what I’ll have to do,” she said.

Heather Jackson, left, and Becky Pepper-Jackson pose for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Heather Jackson, left, and Becky Pepper-Jackson pose for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Becky Pepper-Jackson poses for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

The Supreme Court stands is Washington, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

FILE - Protestors hold signs during a rally at the state capitol in Charleston, W.Va., on March 9, 2023. (AP Photo/Chris Jackson, file)